


You always come back

by edourado



Series: Hell's Kitchen Chronicles [7]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Daredevil - Freeform, F/M, Fluff, Kidnapping, Mentions of Rape, Rated mature because of possible tigger warnings, Tumblr Prompt, edourado, eventually, karedevil - Freeform, kastle - Freeform, prompt, some violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-06-08 18:02:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6867742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edourado/pseuds/edourado
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt from Tumblr: "karen is kidnapped by a serial rapist/killer she was 'investigating' and frank and matt team up to rescue her - centered on karedevil with a bit of kastle?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	You always come back

**Author's Note:**

> Send me promps, guys!

Maybe she should take up meditating, or something like that. If she keeps going like this, she’s bound to have a mental break down. And a physical one, she thought, rolling her head to try and lose that knot on the back of her neck.

And, maybe, she should start navigating in some lighter waters. All this tragedy, this crime, the ugliness of people’s cores can take a toll. Maybe she should finish the story about the crazy maniac that has been kidnapping, raping and killing women - only to leave their bodies exposed for the police, like the sickest, darkest sculptures, with carved skin, painted in blood - and not pick up the next one about mob leaders posing as businessmen passionate about charities, just to make the working people of New York donate their hard earned money - and vote for them, eventually.

She was thinking about Claire, that nurse she met through Foggy. Maybe she could talk to her about something good, for a change. Maybe they could team up and start a nice thing, like a series of the everyday heroes, like the under appreciated, underpaid, overworked nurses of Hell’s Kitchen.

Climbing the subway station stairs, she smiled, thinking about the welcome change of pace that would bring. And then she sucked in a startled breath, when there was a hand against her mouth pressing a wet cloth on her nose, and her eyes were watering, her throat was burning, her heart was racing and her body was struggling, but losing strength.

In less than a minute, Karen Page was out, in the arms of a man she never saw.

.:.

Matt has been home from court for a while, now. Forced some food in and sat on his couch, to drink a beer before changing into his other suit.

He missed them everyday. But on the days he had to go to court, to prep cases and build a strategy with another team, not his team, he missed them a thousand times harder.

At the very least, Foggy was speaking to him a little bit, using information from his office to protect him from the mayor’s office traps. It was cold, not their usual, comfortable friendship. But it was something.

Karen, though, was radio silence. She said she needed time, and he’s giving it to her, of course. But her absence is solid, oppressing. Almost suffocating. He gets a few stolen moments, listening as she walks home from work, the occasional laugh with a co worker, the head first diving into the last places she should be - more than once, Matt stopped someone from harming her, and she just went on going, none the wiser - and, yes, bonding with none other than Frank Castle.

At the very least, he’s trying to tell her she should not be doing most of the things she’s doing. So that’s a plus side. The downside being that he is prone to shooting people. Even though Matt knows Karen is in no danger when she’s with him, he itches. Doesn’t like it. Matt tells himself it’s because he’s unstable, dangerous, and he is just fearing for her safety. He knows it’s bullshit. The reasons he wants her away from Frank is because he can hear her heartbeat - both their heartbeats -, listen to the small laughs he pulls out of her sometimes. He can hear how his voice is softer around her.

Tonight, his first stop is the Bulletin’s roof. Just so he can hear her voice, or catch a sniff of her shampoo.

He gets none. What he does get is Ellison asking someone named Johnson about her. Something about her not showing up for work and not picking up her phone.

In the next three minutes, Matt climbed the editor’s window. Ellison was only mildly surprised when he found him in his office, though.

“God. If you’re here, it’s not good.”

“What do you know?”, Matt asked, his own heart racing.

“She’s been digging into the Carver.”

Godammit, Karen.

“When was the last time you spoke to her?”

“Last night. She texted me this morning, before getting in the subway.”

The man raised his hand to his face, frustrated, worried. Matt took a minute to think.

“She visited his first victim’s sister last week. Yesterday she spoke to one of the cops who found the last girl.”

Yesterday she had also spoken with Frank.

Matt started towards the window again.

“I’ll be back.”

“Wait, wait! What if I find something, how do I get a hold of you?”

“You don’t. But you’re a resourceful man, Mr. Ellison. You’ll find a way to catch my attention.”

And then he was gone, to find Frank.

.:.

The sun was setting for the second time since she’s been here and Karen was starting to lose hope. With all the drugs he has been injecting her with, she was having  
trouble separating hallucination from the truth. So far, she has seen her brother, her parents, the other six dead girls (“you will be my seventh”, he had told her, while strapping her ankles and wrists to a bed. “I was considering this other girl. Beautiful. Tall, black. A ballerina. But you walked my way, so angelic, looking for me, tracing me. I heard you, angel. I’m here”).

She sees Matt a lot. Hears his voice, but it’s distant. She wants to call for him, knows he can hear her, if she tries hard enough, but her voice is always gone, now.  
Karen thinks about him right before she passes out. When she wakes, it’s Frank she sees. His bruised face and that mean frown, that scares the world but makes her feel safe.

She wonders what he, the Carver, has done to her, besides filling her with drugs. From the previous cases, it’s three days before he… Touches them. From what Brett told her, he waits until they’re completely helpless, systems full with tranquilizers. He sits, draws them in a few different poses, rapes and kills them, only to finish by carving up whatever sick image has formed in his head.

Karen felt a hand on her face, fingers running from her temple to her chin, delicately, arranging her hair. Looking up, the smile that opened to her was Matt’s, and she wanted to reach out and touch him, tell him she misses him, that she misses him so much. But then the smile is yellow, twisted, crazed and delirious. He smells of paint thinner and Matt is gone, the monster in human form is back and she is hyperventilating, she wants to scream, but there’s a needle in her belly, pinching, spreading the drug that silenced and dazed her.

“I know, angel, I know, it’s ok, don’t worry…”

There were tears in her eyes and she saw him taking a step back to look at her. The clothes she was wearing were not hers. Some rags that used to be white, ripped and arranged around her.

“You are beautiful, angel. Thank you for coming to me.”

She felt the tears rolling down her face, because he had a notebook and a pencil in his hands.

“I might even delay my date with the ballerina, just for you. I think you are the most special, angel. You and I can be together for a long time, I think.”

He almost sounded sweet, if the crazy didn’t drip from every word he said.

“I know that you don’t, right now. But, if you try, you can love me, and we can be together. You can-”

There was, with a swishing sound, a blade coming through his right shoulder, a red stain growing around it, his eyes big on her, surprised, and Karen wondered if she was imagining Frank’s face over his shoulder.

“I don’t think so, asshole”, said his deep, low, dangerous voice and Karen cried harder, because, all this time, it had never been this clear. He was really there.

He looked at her for a moment, angry, mad, Punisher, and then he pulled his knife, the man screamed, tried to lift his arm and swing it at Frank, and then Karen saw red, felt rough material on her face, that face she missed, the one she trusted, covered by a red mask, close, real, here.

“Matt…”

“I’m here, my love, I got you now, I got you”, he said, and he was nervous, too, she could hear it.

Matt - Daredevil - went to her feet and undid the knots that kept her still. When she could move them again, he moved to her hands. When she raised one, heavy with drugs, to his face, he took it in both his hands, pressed it and kissed it, taking it to his heart and coming to kiss her lips.

“Anything you wanna say, Red?” Frank asked, the sound of his fist repeatedly connecting with her captor’s face stopping for a moment.

Matt stopped a few inches from her face and, even with the mask, she recognized his thinking expression. Karen almost smiled.

“You speak for me, today.”

“Then go.”

He moved again, gently, but fast, picking her up from the table, bed, whatever surface it was she had been lying on.

“Come on, sweetheart, let’s go. I’ll take you home, now.”

Her arms were heavier than ever before, but she raised them to hold him by his neck, resting her head on his shoulder, shaking with effort, relief, tears, nausea, fear.

When he started to walk, she looked at Frank, who had his foot on that monster’s head, pinning him to the floor by his face, knife on his hand. He found her eyes and  
she saw that fierce penetrating look, like he was reading her mind.

“Wait… “she said to Matt.

“You go”, Frank said, firm, at the same time Matt said “We have to go. I’ll kill him if we stay.”

He walked out the door, carrying her in his arms, and she hid her face on the crook of his neck again, feeling her lips touch the material of his red suit.

“You found Frank”, she said.

“To find you.”

She fell asleep, or passed out, before they reached the door to take them outside.

.:.

When Murdock opened the door for him, he expected the question. It didn’t come in words. But Frank looked at eyes that couldn’t see and he knew he was asking.

“Not yet. But he’s not going anywhere.”

His jaw set, he took a breath and nodded, stepping aside to let him in.

“She’s still asleep. He’d been injecting her with a tranquilizer, to keep her from fighting. The doctor set an IV to flush it out.”

He walked to the door he assumed was the bedroom, opened it and saw her, lying, asleep, but serene.

“He made a cut on her hip. An ‘X’.”

X marks the spot.

Grunting the flush of anger that raised inside him, he walked to her side and sat on the edge, taking his hand to her face.

“I made a few cuts of my own.”

For once, Red said nothing.

Slowly, Karen opened her eyes and he regretted sitting so close. Maybe she needed space, maybe him being so close would trigger-

“Frank?”

“I’m here, ma’am.”

Blue eyes focused on his face and she raised her hand to the one he still had on hers.

“I almost thought you wouldn’t come”, she said, smallest voice he ever heard her use.

“You take that idea out of your mind,” he found himself saying. “I’ll always come for you.”

She smiled, closed her eyes and slept again.

He turned his head to Murdock.

“I asked that piece of shit a thousand times. He says he didn’t touch her.”

It was a question, begging for confirmation.

“The doctor said he didn’t”. He moved his head, and Frank understood. “I can tell. He didn’t.”

He trusted that assessment more than the medical one.

Breathing a sigh of relief, he moved his thumb on her cheek one more time, got up and walked to the door.

“I’ll be back.”

.:.

When Karen opened her eyes again, her fingers reached and he was taking her hand before she finished calling for him.

“I’m here.”

Karen cried on his shoulder and he held her the entire time.

“I got you. I got you, you’re safe.”

Holding as tight as she could, she raised her face and he met her, kissing her forehead, and she breathed him in, taking immeasurable comfort in the familiar scent of him.

“Thank you for finding me”, she said, when he touched his forehead to hers, bumping her nose with his. “I think I’ve had enough time.”

Matt smiled, the thousandth flood of relief running through him, to have her here, close to him, safe, solid, alive. His.

“You are everything”, he said, lips brushing hers. “And I will never lose you again.”

**Author's Note:**

> yo, talk to me


End file.
